For many suburban, middle-aged males, owning a riding mower is the ultimate reward for a lifetime of toil. A mechanized, potentially hazardous steed that both symbolizes a man’s mastery of the 5,000 or so square feet of nature surrounding his home and validates his worth as a provider. Such men tend to be meticulous in regards to maintenance, and treat their equipment with deserved respect.

These are not the people whom we will be discussing.

Then you have the folks who look at one and see a slower version of a go-cart. People who will either vastly overestimate or underestimate the inherent abilities of a machine that is specifically designed to lacerate things while in motion. This type of individual may consider riding mowers to be a viable means of highway travel, the perfect accessory to criminal activity, or just another way to get to the closest liquor store. We’d recommend that they be prevented somehow from ever operating heavy equipment in the first place, but then we’d never get to read about…